based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …
64 A.D. – Roman Emperor Nero took the role of a bride in a public wedding ceremony to Pythagoras. Nero also married other men and some women during his lifetime.
1908 – James Amster (d.1986) was an interior decorator in New York City in the 1960s who created the Amster Yard, a New York Historic Landmark.
Amster was born on July 18, 1908, in Lynn, Massachusetts, and grew up in Boston, in a house with a yard, probably the reason why he decided to restore the Amster Yard in Manhattan. Amster attended the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he studied sculpture and painting.
Amster was known for his community involvement on the Turtle Bay, Manhattan, neighborhood, and for his traditional style as interior decorator. At first Amster worked for Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury goods department store based on Fifth Avenue in New York City and opened and managed its decorating and antiques department.
Amster went solo in 1938, opening his design firm. Among his clients: businesses, shipbuilders and hotels in both Central America and United States. He is the interior designer responsible for the redecoration of The Pierre, a luxury hotel located at 2 East 61st Street, Manhattan.
In 1957 Amster founded E. 49th Street Association, later Turtle Bay Association. The first meetings of the association were held at Amster Yard. Amster was also affiliated with: the Prescott Neighborhood House (chairman), the Prescott Nursery School (chairman) and the Friends of Peter Detmold Park Foundation (president). Peter Detmold (1923–1972)[4] was a friend of Amster from the Turtle Bay Association, who was killed in 1972; his murderer was never found.
In 1944 Amster restored what is now known as Amster Yard, designated in 1966 a New York City Designated Landmark, at 211 1/2 East 49th Street. The building was originally a 19th-century boarding house, a station of the Boston Post Road and a commercial yard, but when Amster bought it in 1944 it was abandoned.
James Amster was in a long-lasting relationship with Robert K. Moyer. Concerning the Amster-Moyer relationship, journalist and friend Mike Wallace described them in 1995 as "a wonderful old married couple" and "both people that I admired".
Amster died of leukemia on June 11, 1986. Moyer continued to live at Amster Yard until 1992, when he was the last tenant to move out. Amster Yard was acquired in 1999 and renovated by the Instituto Cervantes, New York, and since 2002, the Instituto allows people to use the yard as a pocket park. However, when the Instituto acquired the property, much of it was destroyed.
1950 – Glenn Hughes, American singer, born (d.2001); the original "Biker" character in the disco group the Village People from 1977 to 1996. Originally the group of all gay members, except for the heterosexual lead singer Victor Willis, was created to target disco's gay fan base, but the band's popularity quickly became mainstream.
Glenn's powerful bass voice played an important part in the background lyrics of almost all Village People's most known hits, such as In The Navy. He sported an extravagant handlebar moustache (or more correctly a horseshoe moustache) and wore his trademark leather outfit on stage and off. As he was the band's "biker" and a real life fanatic, he kept his motorcycle parked inside his home. Hughes, who was also referred to by the masses as "Leatherman," was named to People Magazine's 1979 list of most beautiful people.
He died in March 2001 at age 50 in his apartment in Manhattan from lung cancer.
1951 – Elio Di Rupo is a Belgian socialist politician of Italian heritage. He is the Prime Minister of Belgium, and leader of the Socialist Party (PS). He became Prime Minister on 6 December 2011 and heads the Di Rupo I Government. Elio Di Rupo is the first francophone to hold the office since Paul Vanden Boeynants in 1979, as well as the country's first socialist Prime Minister since Edmond Leburton left office in 1974. He is also the first Belgian Prime Minister of non-Walloon or Flemish descent as well as the second openly gay head of government in modern times.
Elio Di Rupo was born on in a squatters' camp for Italian immigrants in Morlanwelz. His mother and father, landless peasants with six other children, had headed north to find work. When Elio was a year old, his father was run over and killed by a truck. His three brothers were placed in an orphanage while his mother raised him and his three sisters on £6 a month.
He is a flamboyant, atheist, socialist Francophone fond of large, red, floppy bow ties.
Di Rupo came in contact with the socialist movement for the first time during his studies in Mons, where he first obtained a master's degree and afterwards a doctorate in chemistry. He went to the University of Leeds (United Kingdom), where he worked in 1977-1978.
He started his political career as an attache at the cabinet of Jean-Maurice Dehousse in 1980-81.
Before becoming Prime Minister, Di Rupo had been Mayor of Mons, and leader of the PS party.
In 1996, Olivier Trusgnach, a male prostitute, alleged that Di Rupo paid him for sex while Trusgnach was still a minor. This accusation could have meant the end of his political career. Di Rupo denied the accusations and a close investigation showed that he was completely innocent. From that moment he has never hidden his homosexuality.
Mr Di Rupo faced down the wrongful claims that he had had sex with the underage boy. In doing so, he openly declared his sexuality for the first time. In a recent biography, he remembered being pursued down a street by a pack of journalists. He told how one had shouted: "They say you're a homosexual!" He recalled: "I turned around and replied, 'Yes, so what?' I will never forget that moment. [The journalists] were so surprised by my reply that they stopped pushing one other."
He is the first openly gay man to lead an EU country after Norway's Per-Kristian Foss briefly served as prime minister of his country in 2002.
1975 – Anton Krasovsky is a Russian political journalist, propagandist, television personality and gay rights activist.
Krasovsky was born in Podolsk and studied at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute.
In 2011 Krasovsky participated in the presidential campaign of Mikhail Prokhorov. He also worked as a journalist and editor at the pro-Kremlin NTV channel. He also worked at Kommersant, Yandex, Nezavisimaya Gazeta and Vogue, and other publications.
Krasovsky later began work at another pro-Kremlin channel, Kontr television, started by himself and Sergey Minaev in December 2012.
On 25 January 2013, during a discussion of a proposed national ban on "homosexual propaganda", Krasovsky revealed his homosexuality, stating on-air, "I"m gay and I"m as much a human-being as Putin and Medvedev." His statement was not made available online or was deleted soon afterwards, and on 28 January Krasovsky resigned from the channel and denounced the working environment there. According to other sources, he was fired the same day.
His face was soon censored from the show website and removed from the television show"s archives. Krasovsky stated that he came out because he had enough feeling like a hypocrite.
He later referred to the channel"s entire output as "propaganda." In May, following the murder of Vlad Tornovy reportedly because he was thought to be gay, Krasovsky published an article in The Guardian denouncing homophobia in Russia.
How did it come about that today in Russia a good gay person is a dead gay person? How did there come to be a law in the Duma that forbids justifying homosexuality? Until now, the only thing you were forbidden to justify in my country was terrorism. So as far as the deputies are concerned I am not a human being in the same sense that they are. I am to be classed as scum, like a terrorist.
As far as the deputies are concerned I am scum by the fact of my birth, and it was criminal negligence not to have made a note of that in my birth certificate.
What seemed like a bad dream only a couple of years ago has now become reality. And it is terrifying to imagine what could happen tomorrow.
Krasovsky spoke out in August 2013 against the boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia that some gay rights activists proposed. He said: "If you want to boycott Olympic games in Russia, you"re trying to boycott 7 million gay people in Russia."
In July 2016, Anton Krasovsky and the head of the outpatient department of the Moscow Regional AIDS Center Elena Orlova-Morozova established The Foundation in support of people who live with HIV — AIDS.
In December 2017, Krasovsky revealed that he has been HIV positive since 2011.
In 2021, Anton was working at Russia Today as a host of a talk show named "The Antonyms". It seems he has been converted back to pro-Kremlin views.
In January 2022, during a televised interview at Russia Today with Alexander Baunov about recent developments in Kazakhstan, he denied the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO and warned that Russia would start an invasion to stop any such attempt, citing "We (Russia) will make a military intervention to Ukraine. It is our land". On being asked if it was an ultimatum, he agreed.
In one broadcast he called Ukrainians "animals," and said Ukraine "should not exist, and we will do anything to make it disappear."
1985 – Will Blunderfield, born in Vancouver, British Columbia, is a Canadian singer-songwriter and yoga instructor. He is signed to Nettwerk/Nutone Records. Blunderfield's music is influenced by his roots in New York City's musical theater scene and by traditional Indian music, which he first became familiar with at age 18. Xtra! identified Blunderfield as one of the few openly gay Canadian artists to launch a career on a major label.
At 17, Blunderfield moved from Vancouver to New York City to study theatre on scholarship at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy along with other graduates-cum-musicians Jason Derülo, Janelle Monae and Jason Mraz. His original plan was to pursue a career on Broadway, but he soon changed his mind and decided to pursue music and yoga, a discipline which he was introduced to while at the school and, according to him, has the potential to change the world.
Blunderfield performs and teaches around the world at workshops, retreats and conferences. He became a yoga enthusiast in the Bikram school, but now teaches a blend of Bikram Yoga and his own invented style.
Blunderfield's approach to yoga has met with some controversy in the yoga community. In May 2011, The Canadian Press reported that Blunderfield's classes, known for their "Tony Robbins-like motivational affirmations set to a sensational score" have been criticized by yoga purists as bastardizing the tradition. Classes invariably include Blunderfield wearing black eyeliner and harem pants as he prompts students to grind their pelvises in 40 degree heat.
In late 2010, Nettwerk Music Group CEO and yoga enthusiast Terry McBride, who had previously managed artists such as Coldplay, Avril Lavigne, and Sarah McLachlan, signed Blunderfield to the label's yoga-inspired Nutone Records alongside Donna De Lory, Wade Morissette and Krishna Das.
In May 2011, he recorded a duet with Juno Award-winning, multi-platinum record selling artist Bif Naked for the international version of his album Hallelujah. Blunderfield's album was released in July 2011 worldwide and debuted at number one on the iTunes world music chart.
1991 – Marlon Riggs' groundbreaking film on Black Gay experience, Tongues Untied, broadcast on national television (1991)
2006 – On this date the United States House of Representatives debated over a "marriage protection" amendment to the constitution. The outspoken gay congressman Barney Frank said he did not understand Republican arguments that gay marriages would undermine traditional marriages, as if happily married men in Indiana, Nebraska, Kansas and Mississippi, learning that same-sex marriage was legal in Massachusetts, would smack themselves in the head and declare, "Wow, I could have married a guy." So, apparently, same-sex marriage is the V8 juice of America.
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